


love makes you do funny things

by joeysnowy



Category: Villains Series - V. E. Schwab
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21566032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeysnowy/pseuds/joeysnowy
Summary: June is the one thing Marcella can't control.
Relationships: Marcella Riggins/June
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	love makes you do funny things

**Author's Note:**

> technically could be canon compliant, but i'm electing to ignore canon and set this in an au where marcella is fun and sexy and actually gets a satisfying ending. if i had more brain cells i'd write that but instead you get (waves hands)
> 
> title from "perfect wife" by amigo the devil, which is a marcella song in spirit if not narrative

Power, Marcella knows, is a heady thing. Intoxicating and potent, yes, but she feels she might lose control of herself if she took too much. She’s always been in control, had Marcus and every other man wrapped around her little finger, ready to answer her beck and call. But men are as mortal as any other human, and Marcella knew they had limits. However much she tried to push, she was cognizant of that fact.

This new side of her, the part that crumbles and withers and burns everything she touches, doesn’t seem to have limits, doesn’t seem to have an end to her  _ control _ , and she doesn’t know if that should make her stop or push her further.

June is the one thing Marcella can’t control. The shapeshifter comes and goes as she pleases, laughs wildly at serious statements, pushes back when Marcella commands. She doesn’t look impressed at Marcella’s showy attempts for power, when she ruins the velvet curtains in the living room or when she burns the porter who came late with her packages, just looks like she wants to smirk.

“Killing everyone who tries to help you won’t make your life easier,” June says after Marcella burns the head off of another personal shopper who got her sizing wrong. Today she’s a young brown-skinned woman with her hair in a bun, lazing on an armchair with her feet on the coffee table. Marcella wants to slap the bored look off her face.

“It’s not about ease, it’s about what  _ I _ can do,” she snaps. June raises an impeccable eyebrow at that. She isn’t even  _ looking  _ at her, just keeps typing away on her phone, and it makes Marcella want to smash every vase in the room.

Instead she inhales, turns her back and lets out a long breath. She grabs the neck of a porcelain vase on a hall table as she walks away, lets it crumble to silt in her fist. Pretends not to hear June’s snort at her back.

She hates how much June affects her. Jonathan is suitably impressed by her, loyal and malleable to any firm hand. But June refuses to acknowledge any power Marcella has over her, acts like she’s only agreeing out of a kindness, and it bothers Marcella more than she’d like to admit.

She knows she could probably kill her. Wrap her hand around June’s neck, reach into that hot depth within her (which grows closer and closer to the surface every time she uses it), and burn the shapeshifter to ash. Take June by surprise, so that she doesn’t have enough time to react. Watch every face she’s ever stolen flicker through her body before she burns away even the slight freckled auburn girl Marcella has seen at June’s core.

She could, if she wanted to. But she doesn’t.

It’s not like she doesn’t get close. The next time June pushes at her limits, they’re getting ready to head to another one of June’s favorite rough bars in the city. Marcella is at the bathroom sink, applying her favorite shade of dark red lipstick, when June comes up behind her in a new appearance that makes her stop.

“Like it?” June smiles at Marcella through the mirror, and Marcella narrows her eyes. The shapeshifter can’t assume the form of other EOs, but she’s dressed as the closest approximation to Marcella that she can get-- dark hair that runs just below her shoulders in waves, grey eyes instead of Marcella’s blue, a face with higher cheekbones and a rounder jaw, a blazer rather than Marcella’s wardrobe of dresses. “I figure, if I want to score one with the ladies,” June says, leaning over Marcella’s shoulder to pluck the lipstick out of her hand, “I might as well show up as the most beautiful person I know.”

She even had the audacity to wear red. Marcella spins and grabs June’s wrist in a vice-like grip before she can begin applying the lipstick. “Change.” she commands.

June stops, and a slow smile creeps onto her face. It’s eerily familiar, like looking into a funhouse mirror. “What, can’t a girl play supermodel for a night?”

Marcella’s hold tightens, and she feels June’s sleeve beginning to crumble away. “ _ Change _ ,” she says again. She feels the heat within her begin to bubble, and she’s petty enough to let it. 

June’s face twists in annoyance, and she yanks her arm away. Marcella watches as the pale imitation of her own face dissolves away into June’s favorite body, the young woman with brown curls. The red blazer turns into a blouse and a mini-skirt, rather than the long peasant skirt she’s always in. Her lips thin immeasurably, but her eyes still have that June quality Marcella knows. 

Silently, June places the lipstick back onto the counter behind Marcella, but she makes no effort to move away. Her face is inches away from Marcella’s. She is hyper-aware of the height June gained in her switch.

“You should learn to share,” June says quietly. Her breath brushes Marcella’s neck and it takes everything in her to suppress a shiver. She runs a finger down Marcella’s arm, tracing the burn scars with a light touch. “I’d hate for greed to be your downfall.”

With that, the shapeshifter turns away, and Marcella is left in the bathroom, breathing heavily and watching June walk away.

June, for all her frustrating comments about being a lone wolf, doesn’t leave. Doesn’t leave when Marcella wipes ash off her palms for the fifth time that day, doesn’t leave when a particularly frustrating phone conversation with a low level dealer leaves Marcella screaming down the line and ruining almost everything in her office. June doesn’t leave when Marcella melts plastic, rusts metals, rots wood, ruins everything she touches.

Marcella doesn’t know why June stays. She doesn’t know why she lets her.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter @quiltedleaves and on tumblr @happierstories, come say hi!


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